Painting Homework

For those of you who hadn't noticed, I tend to work in batches and bursts, working, playing and learning in other media, which help me to re-fuel and also find their way back into my work (sometimes).  In the background of everything else I have had going on recently, I've been working on some watercolor paintings for the online class, Sketchbook and Watercolor: Journal Style class with Jane LaFazio, and thought you might like to see my newest paintings.

First the apple.  Simple fruit shapes are usually what artists are assigned to paint first.  I think it is because many have an overall simple shape that is easier to get started with, but then you need to find a way to make it interesting, by looking for details in the fruit.

Hopefully, I've managed to make it appear real in my painting:

While I'm not a fan of figs (too sweet), my husband is, and I wouldn't let him eat all of them before I had a chance to paint them too:

And then when he was out mowing the grass, he came across some beautiful mushrooms, and was nice enough to bring one inside for me to paint (I only kept it in as long as I had to, and we used gloves to move it, because we thought it might be the poisonous variety he looked up on the internet).